Sub-ohm vaping and safety

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Posted byadmin13/01/20160 Comment(s)

First and foremost, its important to be safe when playing around with vape gear, so make sure you know exactly what you are doing otherwise do as much as research as you can so you have a solid understanding of your gear and its limitations.

What is sub-ohm vaping? A sub-ohm coil is a coil or a collection of coils (on a build deck) in which the resistance or total resistance is below 1ohm. The more common use of sum-ohm builds are on drippers (and now on some tank systems as well, such as the Aspire Atlantis, Kanger SubTank etc). The vape from a sub-ohm dripper/tank is very different to a vape from a 1+ ohm dripper/tank build. Its warm/hot, dense, intensely flavorful and followed big clouds of vapor.

When it comes to sub-ohm vaping, there are a few basic guidelines one must adhere to, in terms of safety.

Make sure you good batteries that are capable of high drain. This means that the continuous amperage (symbolized as A) discharge should be high. Around 35A is the highest max discharge rate that I heard of on a 18650 battery. Please note, not all batteries are made the same, so not all batteries will be capable of high ampere discharge. Whats popular at this time are the Sony VTC5 which can discharge 30A continuously. Other high drain batteries I have used: Sony VTC4 (30A), LG HE2 (20A) and Panasonic 25Rs (22A). The battery's discharge current will usually be indicated on the description of where you are purchasing the batteries from, so be sure to look for that.

So why do you have to use batteries capable of high ampere discharge? When you build a coil thats low in resistance (sub-ohm), the current that is pulled from the battery is high, so the lower the resistance of your coil build, the more current is pulled from your battery. This is why its crucial to have batteries in your mod thats capable of supplying the desired current to your coil.

There is a simple calculation that you can do to understand if your battery can support the resistance of your coil: Max voltage of your battery (usually 4.2v) divided by the resistance of your coil. For example, you have a battery thats capable of discharging 20A continuously, and you plan to build a coil that at 0.2ohms, using the formula earlier would give you an answer of 21 (20A/0.2ohms). In this case, you will be pulling 21A from a battery thats only capable of pushing 20A. While you can still use this setup, there is a serious threat of the battery venting as you will be pushing the battery beyond its capabilities. Venting can lead to a lot of serious damage to your battery, including exploding. In order to set things right in this example, you will need to bump up your resistance a bit. So if you build your coil at 0.3ohms, you will be drawing 14A from your 20A capable battery, which is well within the battery's capabilities.

This however does not mean its 100% safe, but you will be well within the limitations of your battery, consciously minimizing risks of battery venting. I have personally not heard of batteries venting/exploding when they had been used within their specified limitations.

You must also keep in mind that the lower you resistance, the higher your battery drain, resulting in a short vape time. Generally, you would get about 45mins of quality vape time on a freshly charged Sony VTC5 (2500mah). After this time, the quality of vape would be less satisfying - less warmer or cooler vape, less denser vape and/or less intense. So if you're planning on all day sub-ohm vaping, keep extra charged batteries on the go. I must say though, the quality of vape for that short time period is exceptionally satisfying in all aspects, provided you build a proper sub-ohm coil and wick it right.

On a closing note, please keep in mind that you don't need to sub-ohm to get a great vape. Lower resistances does not always mean it is the greatest vape. The idea is for you to understand your basics so that you can safely experiment with the subject and for you to decide if sub-ohm vaping is for you or not.

As I said in the start, stick to these basics and ensure you fully research before you do any vape gear testing for your safety and the safety of others around you.

I apologize if the tone of this article made sub-ohm vaping sound risky, but the reality of it is that lots of new vapers get into trouble experimenting with things that experienced vapers do without fully understanding the risks involved. Understanding what exactly is going in your vape gear will allow you to have a satisfactory vape with peace of mind.